A blog about engagement and marketing

When will in-store meet social media

In store marketing is the craft of convincing people in-store to buy a certain brand. Be it the end aisle display, a large pallet in the middle of a Wal-Mart or a Target or other big box store. It’s called turning shoppers into buyers.

Part of the marketing effort for in-store is also the on-package design. In store signage and packaging work together to get people to buy. To see that in action, walk down your cereal aisle. The most colorful, character driven cereals are at about 4-feet. Exactly eye level to the kids. Healthier, non-descript cereals are up high.

so what does this have to do with Social media? Many, many brands are being talked about on Social Media. Physical places (restaurants, attractions, etc) and services are being talked about on Yelp, Outside.in, Google Maps, Trip Adviser and other location based recommendation engines. Products are being compared, endorsed and dissed.

In just about any place you can think of in the so-called Web 2.0 community driven internet, brands are being discussed and critiqued. Twitter, Facebook, Digg, you name it, and it’s there. I can tell you that because we do social media landscape studies for a lot of our brands.

So knowing there’s a lot of chatter out there about brands, what do most these brands have on their package? 1-800-Who-Cares? Or better still, they simply have the corporate website on the package. Because people are just dying to visit their corporate website.

So what can in-store and packaging do? How about put Fan us on Facebook on the package. Or how about follow us on Twitter on the instructions.

Just think a little more about the after purchase moment. The moment where the person tries the thing, loves it, and needs and outlet to share. Think of them as fans, and give them a place to share that’s under your brand.

Because they are sharing. In record numbers. They are telling you and I on Facebook that this is awesome. Or that sucks.

And brands need to know both. Because if the brand is killing it, that should be amplified.

And if it sucks, they need to know in order to fix that shit. In these rough economic times, if the customer tweets that a product sucks, it needs to be fixed. Fast. Because if it isn’t, word will spread fast. And before you know it, you’ve got a Motrin headache.

So brands, don’t run and hide. Pick some channels and then use in-store and packaging to drive the people who buy your product to these places to talk you up. Or tell you how bad you suck.

They’re doing it whether you like it or not.

And finally a plug: We have a Partner, Director of In-Store Experience at EMA. And we have a Social Media Strategist. So we’re doing this. Are you?